Daleman's Log - 18 / 04 / 2120

Quillian Daleman - Personal Log
18 / 04 / 2120

Thunder roared in the deeps. Huge fists hammered on the skins of drums taller than the average Man. In the pits beneath Moon City, the drums echoed and rolled. The true trolls had died out centuries ago, hunted down or caught out in the sun, but the descendants of the Oleg-Hai lived on, massive beings, the smallest of them bigger than me. Lit only by the light of lifted smartphones, the Oleg-drummer was like an idol of darkness, slamming down complex rhythms, echoes of the drums and ancient armies.

Then the speakers squealed. A spotlight opened on the middle of the stage. The skinny Orc had her head down as her fingers played across the strings. Feet tapping on pedals as her raucous guitar squeals played out like the screams of fell beasts. When she lifted her head, she screamed.

The audience screamed back at her. Even a nominal Mannish city might have ten, twenty percent Orcs and Goblins. Thousands, tens of thousands. Lots of teenagers. Every sprawl in the West had its scene, its local talents and style. Here, at the gateway to Mordor, the New Orc Nation could fill a stadium, but they played the Pits.

Even through my earplugs, I could feel the vibrations in my chest. I stayed near the back, eyes scanning the crowd. Sweating beneath my overcoat from the heat of all the unwashed bodies. Too many scents for me to pick out just one. Yet while everybody else was watching the show, I was watching the ones who weren't.

Small parcels of **** exchanged hands. A couple young folk were fucking. Fights were usually brief but bloody, folks pushing them into the scrum near the stage. Too loud to do any real business, but a lot of tunnels intersected the pits. I let myself smile as I saw our janitor, Morethain Ithilman, from the museum disappear down one. Lawyer had sprung him this morning. Hadn't been sure he would come here...but there was a lot of overlap between the Goblin Rock scene and the shit he was into.

I moved. No need to be gentle in a crowd like this. Just pushed bodies out of my way, and they got the idea. I was at the entrance of the tunnel in a minute, and the first thing I did was took a deep breath. Caught Morethain's scent...and something else. Something that made me bare my teeth and move faster.

The shrill scream was swallowed by the melodic howl of the Orc on stage, but I heard it. I shed my overcoat. It was a pants and suspenders kind of day, the shirt stuck to me. Picked up speed, at a run as I came into the end of the tunnel, where it widened into a chamber lit by small strings of lights.

Morethain was splayed out on an altar. Glassy, dead eyes stared up above. One of them was stripping the muscle from his arms, the other had opened up his abdomen and had their snout buried in the wound, probably going for the liver. They turned to look at me. Dog-shaped, but too big, too feral. Lips peeled back from fangs, but the eyes were too intelligent. Like mine.

Heard about them, in legends. Never really seen any werewolves before.

They launched themselves at me even as I changed. Boots burst, shirt shredded. I was still on my hind legs, and the smaller one went for my ankle, teeth tearing through what was left of my pants as the big one launched at my throat, teeth bared.

That was their mistake. The teeth snarled in my subdermal armor. My arms wrapped around the werewolf, pinned its front legs to its sides. My claws dug into his back and squeezed. Ribs squeezed. The shapechanger snarled, its rear legs scraped long shallow wounds on my thighs, but it couldn't get purchase. Pain lanced through my ankle, but I angled my head, tried to get my jaws around him.

I had just about gotten one of my primary incisors into his right eyesocket when he changed tactics. Shrunk back to human, a naked masculine form against mine. Maybe he thought he could slip free.

His spine snapped, ribs collapsed. My fangs bit through the skin and lodged in bone, like an obscene kiss. With one wrench of my neck, I tore his face off and dropped the paralyzed, dying beast onto the floor.

The werewolf worrying my ankle looked instinctively as her mate hit the floor. Then I fell on her. For a moment, we were a mass of snapping jaws, claws, and fur. I had the mass and the armor, the reach and the claws. Even the bitch beneath me understood that. There was a moment of mad scrabble, and then my jaws clamped on one of her forelimbs.

I've heard tell that when caught in a trap, a wolf will chew their own limb off to mistake. When she went human, I caught a sight of those starkly strange, yellow-tinged eyes. Lips twisted in hate. My jaws clamped down tight through the softer human flesh. Bone broke. Skin tore. With a feral scream, she wrenched, and something tore.

Then she was gone, peeling off down the tunnel at a sprint, leaking blood from her stump. Leaving me with a mouthful of dead limb.

A part of me wanted to follow. Chase her down like a deer in the woods. But I didn't know these tunnels. Once she went human, it would be harder to explain. Plus, my ankle hurt. I limped as I dropped back to all fours and strolled over to where Morethain lay sprawled. His dead eyes stared at the ceiling. I followed the gaze.

Someone had painted a black circle on the ceiling. Surrounded by letters like the tattoos Morethain had. There was something in the middle, obscured by smokestains. An eye, a hand? Maybe both.

I went human. Naked, bleeding, I limped back to my trenchcoat. Smartphone there had a camera. Needed a few pictures. Morethain on the altar. The ceiling. I paused as I stared at the severed limb. There were tattoos on it. Armored Orcs and what might be men, the form of the plate mail like that in the museum. Prominent on the upper arm, a standard that bore a white hand.

A whimper came from the broken-backed thing on the floor. Dying, not quite dead. Couldn't talk. Couldn't even change. No lips. Blood pooled beneath him. Too late for medics, too early for the chopdocs to recycle.

"Th-th-the Dark Lord ritheth!" it rasped. "Morgaun awaith!"

I watched the light leave the eyes. Ready to step in to ease his passing in return for the gift he had given me, but it wasn't necessary.

Morgaun. Someone who knew what Morethain knew. Who wanted to make sure no one else did. Which meant they had the Morgul blade.

The street doc didn't blink when I hobbled into the shop, naked save for a trench coat, covered with scratches. Some people thought shapechangers regenerated quickly. Maybe others. My wounds took their own time to knit, and benefits from clean stitches and antibiotics. The painkillers weren't unwelcome either.

By the time I made it back to my own apartment, barefoot, bandaged, and reeking of Goblin, wolf, and antiseptic, I was utterly unprepared for the Elfkin in a red dress, holding a black box with a red bow on it.

"Vanessë," I said. "I just dropped a chunk of creds getting patched up, I don't..."

She pouted. Those big, augmented lips turned up in an expression I always found disconcertingly attractive, and she knew it. Then she pulled the ribbon and opened the box.

"But I bought it for you," she said, and blinked her eyes slowly.

Which is how, half-zonked on painkillers, I collapsed on my side on the bed. Vaguely aware as Vanessë shed her dress and slid the hardness onto her body. The short, thick plug pressed into my cunny with more enthusiasm than skill. Scratched at the bandages on my neck that had already begun to itch. Glad that neither of the werewolves had bitten my tits off. As Vanessë grabbed one meaty thigh and began to piston away for all she was worth, the short, sharp thrusts did more for her through neural feedback than they were doing for me.

There are worse ways to fall **** than getting humped by a horny Elfkin whore. To have your last sight before unconsciousness be her big, fake tits bouncing above you. The last sounds, her increasingly **** and high-pitched moans. By the time sleep claimed me, the burn in my cunt even felt rather pleasant.